How To Be A Man: Courage

This Manhood Tribes show episode, hosted by Don Ross, dives into the essence of courage and its pivotal role in defining manhood. We introduce the show with a talk on courage as a vital trait every man needs, alongside a mention of a free resource titled 'How Manly Are You?' intended to help men assess and improve their manliness. Don elaborates on the cultural confusion surrounding manhood and emphasizes celebrating and understanding what it means to be a man through the 5 Marks of Manhood: strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. 

The episode focuses specifically on courage, debunking myths about fearlessness and highlighting the importance of facing fears and challenges to become a better man. Don shares a personal story related to overcoming his fear of playing basketball as a metaphor for facing challenges in various aspects of life. 

The show concludes with a 'manhood challenge' segment encouraging men to engage in a difficult conversation they've been avoiding, thus practicing courage. The overarching message is that true courage lies not in the absence of fear but in the willingness to face and overcome it, supporting the ideal of growing into extraordinary men through manhood, camaraderie, and freedom.

00:00 Introduction to Courage in Manhood
00:38 How Manly Are You?: Take the Quiz!
01:08 Exploring the Essence of Manhood
02:02 The 5 Marks of Manhood
02:43 Becoming an Extraordinary Man
03:47 The Importance of Courage
04:13 Understanding and Facing Fear
07:03 A Personal Journey Through Fear
12:09 Why Courage is Essential to Manhood
14:38 Courage in Relationships and Work
18:39 Summoning Courage with Support
23:33 Manhood Challenge: Courage

Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

If you want to know what it takes to be a man at some point, we're going to have to talk facing your fears and your hardest challenges in life. And to do that, you're going to need something that every man needs, which is courage. Let's talk about courage today on the Manhood Tribes show.

0:35

Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes. com slash manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes. com slash manly.

Don Ross: 1:08

All right guys, welcome to the Manhood Tribes show. My name is Don. I'm your host. Gosh, it is really good to be with you again, as we are continuing on in this series about how to be a man. We've said from the outset that it is so important that we talk about what it means to be a man, because in our culture right now, It is so confusing. It is so hard to figure out what manhood is all about and whether or not manhood is even a good thing. Well here at the Manhood Tribes show, we want to say that it absolutely is being a man is awesome. And manhood is something that should be celebrated and upheld in really good ways. But in order for that to happen, I think we need to be able to provide some really good ideas of what it does mean to be a man so that we can know why we need to uphold that as something that's worth championing. And to talk about what it means to be a man. We have said that there are 5 Marks of Manhood. And the 5 Marks of Manhood are the things that all men should possess in order to demonstrate what it means to be a man. If you look across history and culture and pretty much all times and places. And you look at men, you're going to see this cluster of traits. And so we want to examine these things closely so that we can get a handle on what does it mean to be a man? What is it traditionally meant to be a man? And how can we, as men continue to live those things out in our culture today? So again, those 5 Marks of Manhood are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. Now here at manhood drabs, we don't want to talk about just how to be a man. We want to talk about how to become an extraordinary man, which is really the best version of you that you can possibly be. We want you to learn how to be the best man that you can possibly be. And so that includes not only this idea of manhood learning really how to Excel at being a man, but it also includes some other things. And most importantly, it includes. Having a group of men around you. If you're going to be the best man that you can be, you need a tribe, a group of men who are going to challenge you and push you to become that extraordinary version of yourself. And that's really kind of the second pillar that we talk about in manhood tribes, which is comradery. The third pillar is really all about the idea of freedom and that's about the idea that we need to be able to overcome the major obstacles in our lives. And sometimes we need more than just ourselves. Selves in order to be able to do that. So when you think about manhood tribes, you're going to think about manhood, comradery and freedom. But specifically today, we want to dive into one of those 5 Marks of Manhood and that is the mark of courage. Whenever you think about what it means to be a man. If you're going to look at any list of attributes or even just watch any movie, that's got a manly man in it. You're going to see that one of the things that he displays is the ability to face the challenges and fears in his life. And this is what courage is really all about. But I think it's so important that we talk about courage because I think we've gotten some wrong ideas about what courage really is. I was actually just watching a show the other night, I was kind of like a fantasy type show. And in this show, Uh, there was a man and he was being kind of put through some trials by the gods. And in one of these trials, the gods were having him open up a box and in the box was going to be his greatest fear. The thing that he feared to face the most. And this man, he stared down the gods and he said, I'm not afraid of anything. And it feels so manly. Right? It feels like that the, the superhero, the macho man, right. Really needs to be able to stand up to that test and say, I'm not afraid of anything, but when it comes down to it, I think that even we, as men know that that's not really possible. Right. Fear is just a part of who we are as human beings. It is a natural emotion that surfaces and some ways that are meant to be helpful to us. Fear is meant to highlight when we might be in danger or when harm could be done to us or to someone else that we care about. Those things are really important. We need to pay attention to that type of fear. So not having any fear is actually really a bad thing. And if you've gotten to that place where you don't have any kind of fear, it's either been conditioned out of you. Or you were maybe born with some kind of deficiency. Both of those things are in some ways unhealthy. And so I don't think it's good for us as men to be able to say that we don't have any fears or that we need to get to someplace where we're not afraid of anything. That's that's actually not good. But what we do need to be able to say is that as men, we can develop the kind of courage where we are capable of facing our fears and moving towards them. Facing down those really tough challenges in our lives. But still being able to move towards those things and take action in the midst of them. That's what courage is really all about. It's about this idea of facing our fears and moving towards them. And if we can master that as men, then there's nothing that we do really have to be afraid of. Not because we lack fear, but because we have courage, we know that in the midst of our fears and in the midst of our most difficult challenges, We're going to be able to act. We're not going to be paralyzed. We're not going to be weak. We're not going to be falling apart or weak at the knees because we don't know what to do. Or we're so afraid that harm might come to us, that we just don't know how to take action. But instead, we actually do know that we can do something. Even if it's something small, we have it in us to be able to move towards those things and try to overcome them. So that's what we're aiming for. And that's what we want to talk about today. Now to give you an example. Let me just tell you a story from my own life. As I dealt with some fear, especially as a young man in my twenties. When I grew up, I really didn't ever do much with team sports. I played some sports, but they were mostly individual things like swimming and tennis. And so I didn't ever really participate in a lot of the sports that were common things for guys to play in school and in teams and in other arenas, like football, basketball, and baseball. And especially when it came to team sports, I really was just never any good at basketball. It was something that I was never on a basketball team, but even when I would just try to play with neighborhood kids, I never felt like I knew what I was doing or had any just kind of natural skill at the game. And so it was kind of something that I avoided as a kid, but as I started to get older and into my like late teens and early twenties playing basketball was just kind of like a normal thing that guys did as a way of being able to interact. Interact with each other and have fun. But because I had never really played basketball growing up, I just had no skill and I kind of felt always afraid of being able to play whenever I would play. I just felt like I was the worst player on the team. I was holding my team back and I'm probably was gonna make myself look like a fool. I was gonna showcase the fact that I just didn't know what I was doing. And I didn't have the skills that the other guys who were playing did so more often than not. I just avoided playing basketball. I just didn't play because I wasn't going to have any fun. I felt really insecure about the fact that I was going to make myself look like an idiot. And I was probably going to hold back the other guys who wanted to play and have a good time. So I just didn't, I didn't ever want to face up to that fear and try to overcome it. It was just kind of easier for me to avoid playing basketball, but anytime the opportunity to play basketball came up, I was confronted again with that feeling of insecurity of like, ah, I just don't know what to do here. And I did, I probably felt a little ashamed. I felt ashamed that I couldn't really participate because I had hadn't ever developed those skills. And I was afraid of being embarrassed. You know, of looking like an idiot out on the basketball court. So I just didn't, but I felt bad about the fact that I didn't. I really wasn't showing any kind of courage in the face of my insecurities and my fears. So when I was in my kind of stages as a young man of trying to figure out what did it really mean to be a man? And how could I grow into being a man I've shared before that? In my early twenties, I kind of went through this stage where it was just sort of like, I don't know what it means to be a man or if I am one, but I want to try to figure that out. I wanted to grow as a man. And I really got confronted with this whole area of basketball and just sort of recognizing that. If I was going to grow as a man, I needed to be able to have some courage, to face my fears, to overcome my insecurities and to just do what I could. I knew that I was never going to be the greatest basketball player in the world. You know, I was not ever going to be something that I was really going to Excel at. But it could be something that I could participate in. It could be something that when guys wanted to play a pickup game of basketball that I could show up. And even if I did kind of embarrass myself a little bit, I at least could have fun and I could hang with the other guys around me. So. I sought out a mentor. I sought out a guy who was a little bit older than me, who I knew was actually kind of good at basketball and just asked him if he would take some time with me to sort of teach me some basics, you know? Not just how to shoot a free throw, but like how to dribble and move around well on the court, how to be able to shoot a lay up, which I had never really done before, how to position myself with the other teammates on the court so that I was in the right place at the right time. You know how to just kind of do some basic things so that I could, like I said, just participate so that I could show up and be able to play. And after just a few training sessions with him, I had learned enough where I felt like, okay, like I actually can maybe do this. And so my challenge for myself was that, uh, my, my workplace. Uh, every year we had kind of a retreat at the end of the spring, early summer. And on that retreat, there was usually a three on three. A pickup game of tournament basketball. And so I had, you know, kind of always avoided this tournament. And this year I decided that was going to be my challenges that I was going to participate in the three on three basketball tournament. And I did. And. I wasn't great. I wasn't even really all that good, but I participated and I played and I had a good time and my teammates had a good time with me on their team. And that was really the whole point of it. And now I still am not great at playing basketball and I don't play all that often, but when I'm asked to play, I can. And when I want to be able to show up and participate, I can do that. And now actually, as a dad, one of my sons really loves playing basketball. And this has been a challenge for me is to be able to say, how can I show up and engage with him at a sport that I've never really loved or been good at, but that he really loves and wants me to play with him. Okay. So this is what courage is all about. It's all about being able to show up in the midst of those places, where we feel afraid and insecure. But let's talk a little bit about why courage is even a mark of manhood in the first place. Why is this something that when we talk about being a man. Courage is something that we absolutely need to say is on the list. This is something that all men should possess and demonstrate. So historically, and traditionally, whenever there has been, uh, some kind of an external threat to the world that men have lived in courage has been necessary because men have been the ones who have needed to show up at the perimeter. Okay. So if you lived in a tribe or in a village, And you were a man and there was another tribe or a village that was coming to attack your tribe. You knew that you were going to be called upon to go stand at the perimeter and protect the tribe. Now, obviously as civilization has advanced, you know, that has changed in some ways, but, you know, as the threat of violence has continued, men have needed to show up on the wall or in the army or in whatever way to be the protectors, the ones who have courage and are willing to face the external threats around them. But this happens to just, you know, in simple ways, like, you know, on the playground with your group of buddies, if there's another group of guys who are kind of threatening you or picking on you or whatever, it's been the guys around you who have needed to kind of stand up and to show up and to say, we're going to face down this threat with you. That's been what courage has been like for men and pretty much. Any area and any arena and a tribe of men throughout all of history, courage has been needed. Again, Like strength. It doesn't mean that women don't have courage or can't have courage. It's just that when a threat has been faced. Men have been the one who have been expected to show up with courage to face down that threat. And just because a woman doesn't do that doesn't mean that she is less of a woman, but if a man doesn't do that, it can mean that he has less of a man. A man is looked upon as being cowardly. If he doesn't show up with the courage needed to face down those threats. And so that's part of why courage is really a mark of manhood. It is something that should be expected of men and something that we are meant to offer to the world. But courage. Isn't just about protecting and defending, although that is essential and very important to what it means to be a man and how we show up in the world. But it can also just be about confronting difficulty, not necessarily conflict, but difficulty. So it could be in something like a relationship with a woman where you're facing a really hard. Point where the relationship is getting difficult. And you're finding things that you don't like about her. She's finding things that she doesn't like about you. And you're trying to figure out, are we going to make this thing work? Are we going to keep pressing forward? Is this something that we're going to fight for? It takes courage to wait into that kind of conversation because you know, it may go very poorly. It may end up in an argument or some kind of a fight. There might be feelings that get hurt. And so there's a part of you that wants to kind of just withdraw to pull back from that part of the relationship and just avoid it. But you also know that if you do that, It's not going to be a very good relationship. If there's always parts of that relationship that you or the two of you are just avoiding. It's not going to be as it could be. It's not going to be as good as it could be, but in order to get to that place, you've got to have the courage to show up and to be willing to address that really difficult place in your relationship. The same thing could be said for a difficult work environment. You might have problems with a boss or with a coworker. And there might be a part of you who wants to just avoid those things or to pretend that they aren't there. But usually doing so just means that they're only going to fester and get worse. It takes courage to have a hard conversation with that person in the workplace, to be able to say, Hey, This thing is really difficult. And I know it probably feels difficult for both of us. I would love it. If we could figure out a way to work through it. Can we talk about how to make this thing? That's difficult between us be less difficult. It takes courage to do that because again, It might not get better. It might get worse initially. Uh, or you might make even more of a problem for yourself than you did if you were just avoiding it. But, you know, it's never going to be better if you don't address it in some way. And it takes courage to be able to do that. The thing about courage is that as men, we have to learn to summon it in order to face our fears. Now, some of us are naturally pretty good at that. Honestly, if I'm being honest with you guys, courage is one of the marks of manhood that comes pretty easy for me. I don't have a hard time facing down the difficult things in my life. Usually. Everybody has exceptions to that rule. And so do I, but courage tends to be one of those things that I don't have a problem with. Very often when it comes to dealing with hard relationships, I can kind of tend to be the bull in the China shop who tends to just charge in head first and let's tackle this problem head on. And, you know, while I don't like courage, sometimes I lack finesse and I have to learn how to be able to navigate those difficult situations more smoothly, but it's not because of a lack of courage that I'm having a problem there. Some of you guys might be on the opposite end of that spectrum, where you tend to be more of a peacemaker. You want people to just be able to get along. You want things to go smoothly and you tend to be a little more conflict avoidant because of that. You look for ways to keep the peace instead of to upset the applecart in order to try to be able to get to a better place in those relationships or those situations. And if that's the case for you. Uh, courage might be the thing that you struggle with. It might be the thing that you have a hard time being able to summon up and enter into those places. So you've just got to do whatever it takes to figure out what do you need to do to summon up that courage? Maybe it's just talking yourself through the reality of you're not going to die. Things aren't going to completely fall apart. And this is how you learn to be able to do it better, is to enter into these situations that just are difficult and figure out how to have those really hard conversations, how to face down those places, where you feel insecure, how to enter into those situations, where you have some fear. And you've just got to be able to do what you can to overcome it. Now, none of us guys are going to do well at that on our own. And so this is where it is so important to be able to have a tribe of men around you. You need some other guys who you can talk to and say, I am really avoiding this difficult conversation with my wife. And I know I am because I'm afraid that she's going to yell at me. If I, you know, go in and try to pick this fight, but I know that our relationship needs to get better in this area. And so can you guys push me and challenge me to actually have the conversation that I need to have. Or maybe you don't even have the courage to be able to tell the group of guys around you that that's the conversation that you need to have. But again, this is why it's so important to have that group of guys, because eventually. They're going to be asking you about your marriage. How's it going? What's that looking like for you? Maybe it's not your marriage again. Maybe it's your workplace or maybe it's the lack of dating life that you have, or don't have, because you're not willing to initiate those conversations with a girl. A good group of guys around you is going to be able to challenge you by saying, Hey. What's going on here. Why do you, you continue to talk about like, there's things that are difficult in this relationship or things that are difficult in this situation, but we don't hear you saying what you're going to do about it or how you're facing up to those things. A good group of men around you is going to push you. They're going to challenge you. They're going to say, Hey, it seems like what you need here is to face up to this challenge and we know you can do it. We know you're capable of that. You're a man you're built for courage. So let us help you, let us help you figure out how you can summon up that courage and go face down that challenge so that you can work towards overcoming it and realizing that it's actually not as scary as you might think it is, or it's not going to threaten you as much as you think it will. You just. Need to face it. The thing about courage is that I know all of us as men. What we really fear is failure. We're afraid that we're going to show up and that we don't have enough. We're afraid that our best efforts aren't going to be good enough. And we're just going to end up failing and either looking like a fool or making things worse than they were in the first place. And so when it comes down to it, most of us as men. Avoid those kinds of difficult interactions or situations because we're just afraid of failing. But the thing about courage is, is that. Failure doesn't indicate weak manhood. But failing to try. Does. Let me say that again, because this is really important. Failure doesn't indicate week manhood. But failure to try. Does. You need the courage to go and try to succeed and to overcome your fears. Otherwise you will be forever faced down. By this fear of failure of thinking that you might fail. And so you just never even try as a man. You have got to try. And so I want to encourage you to do just that. I want you to think about what are the really difficult places in your life that you have been dreading or avoiding? What are the situations that, you know, if you show up in, you're going to feel really insecure, maybe you're going to feel like a little boy who doesn't know what he's doing, or like a young man who's ill-equipped to face life or like kind of a boy in a grown man's body. Like. Nobody taught you how to be an adult in this way. And you just don't quite know what to do. Those are the places where you have got to face up to those challenges. And I know that you can do it. I know you can do it because you are a man you're built for this courage is something that you have. You just have to learn how to summon it. Get some guys around you who can help push you towards being able to do that. Well, who can hold you accountable to actually following through with, facing up to it? Who can coach you on the best ways to be able to face up to it so that you don't have to fear that you're going about it the wrong way. All that that group of guys can do for you is give you the tools to equip you and remind you that you do have what it takes to face that fear or to face that challenge. But you have to actually go and do it. I know that you can. And I know that as much as you're feeling fearing failure, I want to remind you that that fear doesn't have to hold you down. You might fail. But failure is not the worst thing failing to try is. So go and try it. Go take your best shot. And I would love to encourage you to create your own manhood challenge for what you can do to be able to develop in this area of courage. We're going to talk about that next here on the Manhood Tribes show. All right guys, here we are for another manhood challenge segment on the Manhood Tribes show. Here in the manhood challenge segment. We like to talk about how you can get better at one of the 5 Marks of Manhood, which are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. We believe that every man should possess those 5 Marks of Manhood in order to demonstrate what it means to be a man. And today in particular, I want to give you a courage challenge. Okay. And for this courage challenge, what I want you to do is to have a hard conversation that you have been avoiding. Alright is really pretty simple. I want you to think about a relationship or a coworker environment or some kind of situation where, you know, you have been avoiding a difficult conversation. Maybe that's your marriage, or maybe that's your girlfriend, whatever it is, you know, that there's some kind of challenge there in facing up to that conversation. And so I want you to do it. I want you to have that conversation. I want you to get some guys around you who can help you think through how do you need to have that conversation? Well, what are the ways that you can talk through it so that you can do it the best that you can? What approach should you have and being able to navigate that difficult conversation. And then I want them to give you some accountability by providing you a timeline on when you need to get it done. Okay. So maybe that needs to happen in the next week. Maybe it needs to happen in the next month, whatever it is, you need to have a deadline for making that conversation happen. And I want you to just go do it. I want to remind you that failure doesn't indicate weak manhood, but failing to try does. So even if this conversation goes horribly bad, I want you to know that that is okay, that having the conversation is better than not having it. And even if you fail at it, you will learn from it how to be able to do it better in the future. It will help you grow in the mark of manhood of courage. And that's what it. means to get better at being a man. Thanks guys. And we'll see you next time here on the Manhood Tribes show.